Alabaster

/ stephanielharper / 52 Comments
alabaster
Alabaster

I am a pink rose petal’s pale glow

black ash tamped in furrows
between the breaths of the living
& the droning of the dead

the dawn’s blush unfurling over sand dunes

& seagulls soaring on thermal spirits
of iodine     salt     & shellfish

& sometimes     scattering in the wind
I can’t find where everything else ends     & I begin

Now rising from the morning hush     this cloud of me
speaks to the red tail hawk perched on a streetlamp
& tells her I’m fine     because I’m still not sure
how to talk about not being fine

I am an instar     trying to be
the clearest version of myself     to sculpt
a final skin of lucent crystal

so that when you come to see my cinder eyes
glinting diamond dust     I will be
the embered dusk bleeding into the sea

& you will know the truth of me

STEPHANIE L. HARPER

“Alabaster,” having first appeared in print in Sixfold magazine, winter 2014, is included in my new chapbook, This Being Done,

Harper_Stephanie_COV

available now at Finishing Line Press until April 27, 2018, for pre-publication order. The number of orders received during this period will determine the print-run scheduled for release on June 22, 2018. I’m grateful for your timely orders to help my work take flight! RESERVE YOUR COPY HERE TODAY!

Avium Morbum MMXVII

/ stephanielharper / 8 Comments
Chickadee

Photo by Cameren Harper, May 2017

This spring, it seemingly isn’t enough
that we’ve once again converted our porch
into a brood-rearing safe haven:
The once-adorable, amiable models
of avian parental prowess that have been
gracing us with their proximity
for years, are now a couple of flighty,
black & white fluff-balls of aggression. 

It’s like their little bird brains just
suddenly lost all sense of perspective—
their former bearing of healthy respect
toward us & our home has morphed
into a hostile face-off of assaults
on the front door window, dive-bombing
campaigns on the car in the driveway,
replete with poo, & kamikaze-style strikes
on their equally-fraught reflections
in the side-view mirror.

Why, my teen-aged son has been asking,
are the Chickadees being so stupid?

Of course, he already understands
that the answer to his question lies
in another question—which, come to think
of it, is THE question that everyone I know
has been asking for months, since nobody
is really surprised anymore when something
extreme, irrational, or just plain opposite-of-
intelligent happens—it’s as if the Bizarro World
episode of Seinfeld just started up again on its own,
& in its antithetical-T.V.-show fashion, decided
never to end—because, apparently, Nature, itself,
is being required to stretch its fabric all out of proportion
in effort to accommodate the unprecedentedly-dense
troposphere’s lambasting winds; but I find myself

ask-answering him, anyway, if only half-hopeful
that this serum synthesized of not-reasons might yet
suffice to inoculate him against such rife contagion:

Do they remind you of anyone?

STEPHANIE L. HARPER

“Avium Morbum MMXVII” was first drafted during the May 2017 Tupelo Press 30/30 challenge.

My new poetry chapbook, This Being Done, is available for advance copy purchase at Finishing Line Press from now until April 27, 2018. The number of orders received during this two-month pre-publication sales period will determine the size of the print run, which is currently scheduled for release on June 22, 2018. For more info CLICK HERE!

My new chapbook is now available!

/ stephanielharper / 10 Comments

It’s officially official! My debut poetry collection, This Being Done, is now available for prepublication order! RESERVE YOUR COPY HERE: Finishing Line Press!

Beesiness As Usual_Matthew Harper

Thank you to my son, Matthew Harper, for contributing his gorgeous photograph, “Beesiness as Usual” for use on the cover of THIS BEING DONE. According to the timeline I received from Finishing Line Press, the graphic designer should have my cover design completed sometime this week! I’ll be sharing it here as soon as it’s ready!

I’m so grateful to my WordPress Poetry Posse for your interest in, enthusiasm for, and support of my work! I can’t emphasize enough the difference you make in my life as a poet, artist, and human being, in general.

I must also give a shout-out to poet and human extraordinaire, Robert Okaji, whose guidance has been instrumental in this venture. Thank you, Bob, for sharing your many talents with our community, and for your wisdom, humility, and generosity of spirit that so enrich my life, and the lives of countless others!

 

 

 

Two Poems up at formidableWoman!

/ stephanielharper / 6 Comments
Stephanie L Harper 1.JPG

Steph, poet, & Sydney, cattle dog extraordinaire!

Thank you so much to editor D. Ellis Phelps of Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press for hosting my poems, “Risen” and “Instead,” at formidableWoman, and for making me feel like a celebrity with her warm, insightful introduction!

Browse D.’s wonderful site here: Formidable Woman Sanctuary

Also, check out these terrific submissions opportunities here: Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press

“Instead” appears in my new chapbook, This Being Done, which will be available for pre-publication order TOMORROW, February 26, 2018, through April 27, 2018, at Finishing Line Press. I will post the link to order as soon as it goes live! Stay tuned for further announcements throughout the next couple of months!

Stopping by Clothes with a White Fur Gifting

/ stephanielharper / Leave a comment

LuAnne Holder’s parody of Frost’s “Stopping by Woods…,” a piece after my own heart, has officially made my day! 🐈

LuAnne Holder's avatarWind Rush

Star on Black2

Which cat did this, oh my who knows
This leaving fur upon my clothes
She did it while I was away
On my black dress she took repose

My cats are not ones to delay
To seek out nap spots black or grey
And leave white fur just to remind
Me that their love will never stray

So any clothes left out they’ll find
The dark ones are the grandest kind
To rest white bellies for contrast
This deed they think they’ve been assigned

If I don’t want to be aghast
I’ll hang my clothes and do it fast
This I’ve figured out at last
This I’ve figured out at last

I have always loved the poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost, particularly its interesting rhyme scheme. Inspired by SLHARPERPOETRY’s clever rewrite of Lewis Carroll’s Jaberwokey as Trumplewokey, I decided to do a rewrite…

View original post 55 more words

Lupercalia

/ stephanielharper / 3 Comments

Howl2

Lupercalia

We probe into the distant    wintry
rest of white oaks & umbrella pines

moonlit with longing to thrill
in the feral     hesitant glints

that crack the black tourmaline cold
our eyes pursuing their penumbrae

until the brink of blindness    reaching
for our bloodline of lost

infidel selves     still bound
to the night’s crystalline tenors

As our illicit     newborn brothers were
abandoned to the Tiber     & delivered

keening for milk     to their mongrel lives
we     too     were borne by a savage river

to a mother    waiting on the Palatine shore

Capitoline Wolf

“Lupercalia” appears in my chapbook, This Being Done, which will be available for pre-sale purchase at Finishing Line Press, starting next week! Stay tuned for more announcements, including the order link on the Finishing Line Press website as soon as it goes live!

Hope Springs Eternal & So Does Willie Nelson

/ stephanielharper / 2 Comments

first-buds-forming

Another death hoax? Gee, how original…
You folks ain’t fickle—guess I’ll give ya points
fer grit if not fer gumption. I’ve rolled joints
my friends, far stiffer than my tricky ankle,
imbibed red wine that’s older than yer gran’;
this here bandana holds more DNA
than most small countries on a holiday,
so keep your Internet! Just leave the bedpan
close, gas up the bus, & brace for twenty
more long years—well, give or take a decade.
The road’s a callin’, songs are in my head,
& my ol’ guitar plays as good as any;
there’s plenty weed to smoke & hair to braid:
So’s far as I can tell, I’m still not dead.

STEPHANIE L. HARPER

“Hope Springs Eternal…” came to defile the earth as a result of being generously sponsored by Robert Okaji — whose behest it was for me to write a “Sonnet Ending with Three Words from a Willie Nelson Song,” which included the words, “wine, weed, and guitar,” and was preferably “Petrarchan” — during the May 2017 Tupelo Press 30/30 Challenge.

I post it today in protest of having to endure one more minute of Trumplewocky & Co. without being sufficiently anesthetized.

Trumplewocky

/ stephanielharper / 21 Comments

trumplewocky1

‘Twas feckish, and the irkly grobes
Did fark and fistle in the slade;
All dingly were the rectiprobes
And the dampnuts updrade.

“Beware the Trumplewock, my friend!
The bigly mouth, those puny mitts!
Beware the Tweet bird, and off-fend
The cronious Perkletits!”

She packed her poisal voice and went:
Fat chance the vapid imp she’d spare—
So quivered he ‘neath his Cheeto tree,
And feebly cried, “Unfair!”

And, as the greelish light grew pale,
The Trumplewock, with wits of wood,
Came grabbling through the femly vale
Because he thought he could!

Eins, zwei! Eins, zwei! And quick as pie
The poisal voice sliced fierce and true:
“Go flay yourself, you mawkish elf,
And burn the residue!”

The Trumplewock would rue the day
He left his diddlepot of lack.
The frankish words would haunt him ‘til
He went galumphing back.

‘Twas feckish, and the irkly grobes
Did fark and fistle in the slade;
All dingly were the rectiprobes
And the dampnuts updrade.

STEPHANIE L. HARPER

“Trumplewocky” first appeared on this blog in February 2017. It was inspired by the monstrous farce (still!!!) inhabiting the White House, and Lewis Carroll’s timeless masterpiece, JABBERWOCKY.